In the wake of significant discussion in the networking industry about the potential for SDN, Juniper Networks asked 400 IT decision makers (ITDMs) about how they plan to architect their networks in the future.
Of the surveyed companies that have plans to adopt SDN, 74 percent say they plan to do so in within the next year, with 30 percent indicating they plan to make the move in just one month.
However, SDN is not without its challenges and potential barriers as companies drive adoption. Following cost (50 percent), ITDMs noted difficulty integrating with existing systems (35 percent), security concerns (34 percent) and lack of skills from existing employees (28 percent) as the top challenges to adoption of SDN. These perceived challenges may be attributable to the 47.5 percent of respondents who indicated that they do not have plans to deploy SDN-enabled technology.
News Highlights
The survey asked ITDMs to provide their perspectives on SDN readiness, what benefits it presents and the challenges they face.
* More than a quarter of surveyed companies (27 percent) report that they are completely ready or almost completely ready to adopt SDN - giving themselves an "A" or "B" letter grade.
* Passing Grade: In addition, 38 percent of the ITDMs graded their organisation's SDN readiness as a "C" noting that their business was somewhat ready to adopt SDN.
* The Opportunity: ITDMs surveyed believe the biggest benefit of SDN is improved network performance and efficiency (26 percent), followed by simplified network operations (19 percent) and cost savings on operations (13 percent).
* SDN Criteria: When asked what their organisations are looking for when adopting SDN, ITDMs reported the following top criteria:
o High availability and resiliency (30 percent)
o Analytics and reporting (23 percent)
o Automation and rapid provisioning (19 percent)
o Open source options (12 percent)
o Scale (10 percent)